Associated with the Four of Wands in Tarot, which shows a celebration beneath a canopy of flowers supported by four staffs, the third decan of Aries is called The Burning Rose in Austin Coppock‘s naming conventions. T. Susan Chang called it Beauty Weds the Architect. The Hellenistic Alexandrians associated with the god called Eros Protogonus, firstborn desire, who is called in Orphic Hymns #5 and #57. In the Chaldean order, this decan belongs to Venus — who is inconjunct and retrograde, but trining Mars sign-ruler of Aries, exalted, and in her station degree. she’s preparing to go direct and pass through a three-and-a-half week speed-run out of Pisces and into Aries. The Sun will enter this decan on 9 April 2025 at 10:49 am EDT, and remain for ten days, five hours, and seven minutes before entering Taurus on 19 April 2025 at 3:56 pm EDT.
It’s a brand new era in some ways… Neptune, the oceanic and wide-imagining planet of visionaries and dreamers —whether they be filmmakers or drug addicts — has changed signs from Pisces to Aries. It’s the first time since 14 April 1861 that this has occurred — on that occasion, Major Robert Anderson of the United States surrendered Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, to forces of the new Confederate state of South Carolina after a 34-hour bombardment. Anderson surrendered the fort after negotiating terms that allowed for a 100-gun salute, wasting away the remaining gunpowder in the fort’s magazines and destroying a number of cannon in the process. Among the men in the fort are second-in-command Captain Abner Doubleday, later hailed (incorrectly) as the visionary who developed the rules of American Baseball. It was June 1874 before Neptune entered Taurus for the first time, and April 1875 before Neptune left Aries for the last time. In between, the United States not only fought their own civil war but also substantially subjugated Native nations within their modern territorial borders through an explicitly imperialist policy; both Germany and Italy unified their disparate principalities and territories into united nation-states; and Britain largely completed the conquest of the lands that represented the British Empire at its greatest extent. Neptune in Aries can’t really be described as a peaceful era in world history. At the same time, though, we should understand this combination as a popular effort to create a united front in the face of aristocratic vision — the American Civil War put the image of permanent chattel slavery in the grave, while the Italian unification ended the Papal States’ power as a theocratic government. Britain’s mill owners found it necessary to bow to popular pressure and stayed out of the American civil war, though they wanted to intervene to keep cotton cheap. (Admittedly, German unification didn’t result in more rights for German peasantry).
The ancient Hellenes associated Aries III with Eros, often titled protogonos “first born”. Today e think of Eros as the cute little baby with angel wings that are now called cherubs, and arrows with little hearts on the end of it. It’s worth remembering that cherub, though, is a contraction of the Hebrew Cherubim, the monstrous angels that guard the throne of G-d, four terrifying presences with six wings and voices like earthquakes. The Greeks disguised Eros’ tremendous power behind a visage of a baby, or an athletic twink with wings (the desirable figure of youth) — knowing something of the way in which desire can overwhelm and overcome all rational sense. My friend J reported watching a screaming child in a grocery store asking for some cheap plastic toy, and his exasperated mother asking why he wanted such a piece of junk. Screaming breathlessly between yowls of desperation, the child screamed, “I …. wants…. what …. I …. wants…. because… I… wants… it!” No other explanation of Eros’ naked desire is possible. As a god of sex and love and copulation, Eros makes us hard or wet (or soft and dry) in an irrational instant, turning us on and off like a light switch (or sometimes like a dimmer). The horns of his bow bend back, and we become horned ourselves. All beings in the world, in some sense, respond to the Firstborn.
In the Chaldean order, this decan belongs to Venus. It’s apropos that the last third of both of Mars’ signs, Aries and Scorpio, belong to the love goddess. She’s in detriment in both signs, but in these last ten degrees she’s in charge. It’s a pity that she’s not here right now… but she will be here for a somewhat longer stay from May 27 to June 5, both activating hidden desires and the means to achieve them. By that point, Mars will be in Leo, providing a favorable trine of support and ambition to cross things off your task lists.
The dodeks of Aries III are Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, and Pisces. Sagittarius hunts for what it wants, Capricorn stores it, Aquarius takes it out of storage and puts it to use, and Pisces dreams of the profits that will flow from it. In this way, Aries III resembles both the busy housewife of the ancient world concerned with oikonomia, or the rules of the household — and of the would-be lover on the prowl for a new partner.
It’s worth mentioning this decan’s associations with the Four of Wands in Tarot, a ludicrously happy card which softens Martial ambition with beauty and adornment. It may have been with six-guns, horses, railroads (and with guns, germs and steel, as Jared Diamond would have it) that the West was won… but it was by the labors of women that schools were built, and rough mining and cattle camps became towns and cities.
House Delineations
The First House of self and self-presentation is Cancer, ruled by the Moon in Virgo from the sextile and hosting Mars as a triplicity lord. Nurturance and caretaking are in public view, but secret desires and an intention to find our way through the current crisis by magic and direct action are both bubbling below the surface. Cabals and secret meetings have a certain amount of appeal, but it’s best to put your imagination to work on forging the tools that these groups need, rather than rushing into action empty handed.
The Second House of wealth and resources is Leo, ruled by the trining Sun in exaltation. It’s going to be important to show what you have now, and what you can still afford, but you should make your desires and passions known to your employer or supervisor, and make clear where your loyalties lie. You may have to roar for what you want, but you’re rarely going to be so well positioned to make your case that what you currently have is perhaps not enough.
The Third House of family, neighborhood, and location is Virgo, ruled by opposing Mercury in detriment and exile in Pisces, but hosting the Moon as a triplicity lord — and also the South Node. Important decisions that affect your family and community’s down-to-earth needs are being made far away from you, and with little regard to what you actually need or want. Closures and endings should be expected before the Full Moon on April 12. The Moon is in al-Awwa, “The Wings” or Thirteen Mansion, bringing opportunities for tutoring in the arts of love from intimate associates… or forming alliances for the betterment of community with one’s neighbors. Both? In some situations, yes.
The Fourth House of home, family, and household is Libra, hosting Black Moon Lillith and ruled by inconjunct Venus; only Jupiter as a triplicate ruler is able to support. In matters of health care, legal responsibilities, and financial matters related to side-hustles, you are likely to find a hybrid approach works best, combining the best of your own ideas and receiving advice from others. You’re still going to have to do most of the work alone, and probably break a few rules to do so. Beautiful circumstances in your family are possible, but practice financial moderation and good sense in choosing them.
The Fifth House of pleasures and hobbies, and of children, is Scorpio, ruled by Mars from the trine; both the Moon and Venus provide additional support from the sextile and the trine for amorous adventures, possibly with a bit of stinginess or sharpness to them. Even so, the erotic undercurrent has overtones of both sadness and overwhelm; the luxuriant hotel bed may become damp but probably not soaked; restrictions and unexpected limits may crop up. Your children may be having some awakenings of their own, but it’s worth letting them have some secrets you don’t pry out of them.
The Sixth House of daily routines, illness prevention, employees and small animals is Sagittarius, ruled by Jupiter in detriment from the opposition. Right now, all your work and labor is concentrated on big-picture thinking and the obstacles that come with it; the picayune details of how it gets parceled out into hours on the task list or meeting agenda items or yoga poses is probably beyond your abilities right now. Do small things in conjunction with large ones, but remember that it’s easy to blow little problems up like balloons, and that big problems are best cut into manageable pieces a few bites at a time.
The Seventh House of relationships is Capricorn ruled by Saturn at the sextile. Saturn is in the Aquarius dodek of Pisces, suggesting that you and your partner are taking more out of the “Bank of Love” these days than either of you are putting in. In this relationship theory, each partner in a relationship makes regular deposits of love: through gifts, through acts of service, yada yada (from the somewhat discredited theory of Five Love Languages)… and then, when big things come up, you make withdrawals against your earlier deposits. You’re both living off of your savings, as it were, and drawing down resources accumulated over the length of your relationship. It’s important to expend this energy reserve right now, but be aware that at some point you’re going to have to re-fill the reserve.
The Eighth House of odious responsibility like taxes and death and the department of motor vehicles is Aquarius, ruled by inconjunct Saturn and hosting Pluto. Numerous critical bureaucratic systems are in the process of being shut down by critics with more money and power than sense — and natural systems of reluctance, deliberation, and wisdom that keep these systems on even keels are not going to respond in a timely fashion. Expect delays and challenges and even outright breakages at all levels of government, and similarly tedious service systems like insurance companies.
The Ninth House of travel, religion, tourism and foreign places is Pisces, ruled by detrimented Jupiter from the square, and hosting Venus and Mercury besieging Saturn. The North Node is also present. Jupiter and Mercury are in mutual reception, offering benefits to long-distance travel and long-term thinking alike. Delays and limitations to travel are likely, but they are also likely to be counterbalanced by large numbers of people making things difficult for the people and systems causing the delays. Dogmatic opinions and structures in religion and administrative forces in academia are likely to face pushback and defiance from women, queer community activists, and actual experts in the field.
The Tenth House of profession, career and reputation is Aries, ruled by squaring Mars in exile in Cancer, but hosting triplicity ruler the Sun in his exaltation, and Neptune; detrimented Jupiter provides additional support from the sextile. It will be easy to define yourself in terms of your professional associations, and present a larger vision for what your career can or should be. But first you’re going to have to divide that vision into the smaller pieces of which it is made: before you can be a regional vice president, you have to be a store manager, and before that a shift supervisor, and so on. There’s rarely a way to the top except by the traditional routes. Think about what it is that you desire, professionally, over the next thirteen years — and figure out what steps might get you there from where you are, that you can start taking today.
The Eleventh House of allies, associates, friends, and organizations in which you are a member is Taurus, ruled by exalted Venus in Pisces from the sextile. Uranus is present; triplicity ruler Mars in exile in Cancer offers a minority report from the square, while the Moon offers a more supportive trine. A spiritual foundation is necessary to many of your friendships and alliances currently, but your own ambitions (and horniness for change) may get in the way of some extended relationships and situationships. Harsh communications from afar may characterize some attachments, but others may blossom into greater closeness through formerly hidden affinities and expertises being put into practice.
The Twelfth House of loneliness, secret foes, and long-term plans is Gemini, ruled by squaring Mercury in exile and detriment in Pisces, who nonetheless benefits from mutual reception with Jupiter. The long-term outlook is bright, but the immediate forecast shows storm clouds and challenges on all horizons and from above and below. Help comes from faraway places and provides both support in detail and in providing a larger-scale map of the overall strategic situation. You can be frightened for what happens today, but remember that there are clear skies beyond the current storm.
Horoscopes by Rising Sign
Decan I of any sign (usually covering the 21st of the month to the first of the following month) is free to all visitors; Decan II is only available to Patreon and Ko-Fi.com subscribers; and Decan III is available to Patreon, Ko-Fi, and MailChimp subscribers.
I recommend reading your Sun sign, Moon sign, and Rising sign for best results. I write them with rising sign in mind, but several people have told me they find that they do better with all three.
Cancer: You want what you want, and you want it now. But the burning desires you have are also likely to feel shameful or overly needy, and thus difficult to impart when so many other endeavors require your input and effort at the moment. There are professional goals to accomplish, long-term plans to make, acquaintances to cement into alliances through spiritual connection, romantic connections to pursue, and yes, possibly also graduations to accomplish. It’s a lot. Wealth and power are on the opposite side of a lot of tedious difficulties. Keep plugging away at the difficulties, and work with them — and the rest will gradually fall into place.
Leo: Financial matters will occupy your attention, but primarily in costing out and managing some travel expenses or educational certificates that you may need. The visioning for this journey (mental or physical) may come on suddenly, but it should be not-unexpected. It may seem insupportable or non-viable, but you may have to do it in order to see the matter through on some social responsibility to another. It is possible to travel far on a budget, but it requires a little creativity and diplomacy to make couch surfing work to your advantage, and to persuade others to help you. Be wary of offering romantic attachments on this road trip, though — you may find yourself shacking up instead of hitting the road, and trading great expectations for a more settled quietude.
Virgo: Local matters bring contentment, as you broker a new sort of arrangement between close friends — it may be a new economic partnership, or a romantic one. However, sometimes your function may be to close down what no longer serves you or your own partner well. There are creative and communicative pressures forcing matters to a head, that are going to require that you accept somewhat less in order to make more room for what they need. Your new job description will require a greater degree of cooperation, generosity and leadership, but it may also require you to cut ties with people that you find to be important in your life. You may be in a good position to break some of your own budgetary rules this week, despite markets crashing —but it would be sensible for you to focus on the obligations and expenses first, before trying to make secret adjustments to income.
Libra: Household matters may be all consuming on a day-to-day basis, and you’ll be tempted to break usual patterns in search of sexier and more aesthetically pleasing options nearly every day. It’ll be good to remember that you may not be the only vote that counts in the arrangement of a happy home. A spouse or significant other may desire a more traditional style but there’s no reason to come to argument about it. Let your space reflect both your tastes — but you in particular should plan to reach for the more mature version of your style rather than the style of your past. Allow yourself to hybridize several patterns into a beautiful and seamless hole. You may find that permitting more maturity will suggest greater stability and ease to you and your home — and that using those resources will allow for better opportunities for entertaining and showing off. Be aware that the first guests, though, are more likely to be allies of your partner than yourself — and that you should be welcoming and gracious, even if the intellectual conversation is not to your preference. Seek to be curious, and you’ll find you flourish as a host every day.
Scorpio: The learning and artistry you’re working on is likely inspiring you in an almost spiritual way, and you’re getting a chance to build some ambitious projects — even if they’re not to your taste, they’re still teaching you important skills. Yet be careful of injury, both to yourself and to the work; the desire to collaborate with others is likely strong right now, and there’s a steady passion in some of your respondents to let themselves get carried away — their creative imagination may write checks their actual abilities can’t cash. Be cautious of accepting eager offers of collaborative work that outrun the actual portfolio of work. Meanwhile, use the work you’re producing alone to identify what your major goals might be for the next decade and a half, and figure out some of the steps you need to take to get there. You can’t plan the small stuff, but building the long-range plan of big stuff will likely get you there faster.
Sagittarius: You’re at the beginning of a new journey into hobbies and pleasures and self-discoveries, and not all of them will be happy. In some ways you’re going to be looking at a more traditional approach for a while; even as the number of duties seems to pile up in your incoming basket, the number of outgoing expenses will feel transformative. AT the moment, your home and family life is under a great deal of pressure; it will take a fair bit of diplomacy, expertise, and creativity to climb the new learning curve. Be generous and kind to your existing partnerships by supporting them with right livelihood and right resources, and remember to stay on top of your workload. Sex and sexuality questions are going to weigh heavily on your mind; it may be worth unburying some old ideas and re-making them in some fashion to be something new; a friend may help you break out of old patterns by forging a new link in your familiar connections.
Capricorn: it’s hard to put a relationship in storage; it’s less about laying up treasures in a vault and more about continuing in ongoing connections and camaraderie with another person. It’s harder still to focus on creating a “Brangelina”-style coupling, where you and a partner or close ally are seen as a single entity more than as a collection of parts. Yet it is that work — of remaining true to your closest peers, even while great challenges erupt or splash around you, that is your labor in the next ten days. Use the changing weather to build a strong list of tasks for family and household, and then revolutionize how you approach those tasks — treat them as a source of entertainment for both you and your progeny, and life will never be dull.
Aquarius: It’s never fun when responsibility and duty are the first things on the agenda for your life; and even less fun when it feels like you have to use all your creative and persuasive powers to make the money go farther and last longer than it’s ever had to before. You’re going to have to pull out all the stops to keep your household from falling into the grip of austerity, and this may mean figuring out how to expand your hobbyist activities into professional side-hustles in the coming economy. Don’t expect this to be easy, though, especially if your hobbies involve working with power tools or sharp objects. Before you go whole-hog into the carpentry or metalworking business, it’s worth your time and energy to write a business plan, and then walk through it or take it for a test drive or a walk with some of your more visionary friends. Nothing about this will be simple: don’t start with the product or service, start with the plan of how you’ll sell the product or service. Refine that until it’s reasonable before you commit to new materials costs.
Pisces: The journey will be worth it, although at the moment the value of the pilgrimage may feel hemmed in by a range of theories and aesthetic choices that have little to do with the ceremonial or spiritual meaning of the program. You have a vision of how this is going to help your resources grow in your professional life, but it’s difficult at the moment to see how you’ll achieve these goals in less than a decade and a half. Recognize that nobody ever got to the top of the heap through solo endeavor, though. Revolutionize your friends list, and become an uncommon agitator for the value of networks. If you haven’t got a little black book of serious connections to professionals and associates in your community, it’s time to start. If you aren’t a member of all the professional associations that matter in your field, it’s time to join, and show up. Will this put some of your pleasures on the back burner, cause some of your hobbies to become less important? Yes, perhaps, for a time… but by summer you may find that things have turned around. Single folks should be looking to reconnect; if you’re already partnered, a romantic date night could rekindle some sparks.
Aries: The insights of the next ten days might help you plan and envision the path your career will take over the next thirteen years. I envy you that clarity, because there’s a traditional path opening up and it might even be something that you desire. At the moment, yes, there’s massive obstacles in the way, and it’s natural to feel some anxiety about this in the short term. Don’t focus on the next two months, though — where do you want to be in three years? Five years? Ten? A friend or ally can help you think through the permissions and processes more effectively than I can, but it will probably mean pulling some resources out of deep storage and recast how you use them. Will this cause some tears and argument at home? Perhaps. But if you avoid the get-rich-quick scheme, and focus on fundamentals, you may find that the reconciliation not only buries the hatchet but also carries the promise of spring.
Taurus: As Uranus crosses the last five degrees of your rising sign, the next few weeks until July 7 are likely to bring substantial upsets to your life. In the next ten days, these may be felt particularly in the area of friendships and alliances. You will discover that the changes are largely in yourself, as a result of having greater security with money, and not being tied so tightly to the social and economic circumstances of your allies. There’s going to be a chance to focus more on forging your own path, and picking which of your own desires you most wish to respond to. Of course, this also means that your closest relationships with friends and family may be the places where you’re most inclined to pick fights… and to find possible partners for make-up sex, if that’s on your radar. But it’s worth noting that your pleasure centers are going through some substantive changes; if your kids are grown, you may find the next year is a kind of last-hurrah. There are a lot of “lasts” coming up in your life, but the places where the “firsts” and the “new” energy is going to emerge are in your associations and in your professional opportunities. Be prepared to break away from some of your old routines.
Gemini: you may think you’re more isolated and alone than usual, but the amount of planning and generous problem-solving that you’ll have to do (probably from a distance) will not be reduced— and many people may find that you’re more essential than ever. It’s true that you may find that both age and cunning and youth and vigor are arrayed against your expertise; but you have built the foundations of success here, and you’re likely to be able to make a quicker getaway while they’re still struggling to tie their shoes on the racetrack. At home, you may encounter a longing for a more amorous or sexualized reconnection. But unburying those desires may require moving some stuff around — both physical and mental baggage. Where and how will you find contentment?
Colophon
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If you want to read some of my astrologically-oriented poetry, the largest collection is called A Full Volume of Splendor and Starlight, available through my Etsy shop, and containing poems and hymns to the planets, constellations, decan deities, and Moon Mansion angels. While not astrological, Festae contains hymns to some of the older Roman gods and spirits from the calendar created by Numa Pompilius, the second ancient King of Rome.
I use iPhemeris for my charting software, and screenshot it to make charts. I want to thank the team that develops iPhemeris for the addition of Terms and Decans to their charts. I also use Hugh Tran‘s Physis typeface to craft logos for this blog, as well.
I use Christopher Warnock‘s The Mansions of the Moon as the basis of my Moon placement delineations, and Austin Coppock‘s 36 Faces for much of my planetary delineations. Neither gentleman endorses me.
